“What went wrong is this stupid wokeness.
Don’t just look at
Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at
Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this defund the police lunacy,
this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools.”
For Democrats, Wokeness Meets Reality
Nov. 6, 2021
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist
WASHINGTON — In Shakespeare, when
characters want to fulfill their desires, they escape to what’s been called the
Green World.
And that’s what Democrats promised
voters: that they could leave behind the vitriol and aggravation of Donald
Trump’s America and escape to an Arden that was cool, calm and reassuring.
Democrats violated that pledge. On the
way to that verdant forest, we got led into a circular firing squad. Tight
margins in Congress do not bring out the best in pols.
“We promised to
change the rancor and division,” said one top Democrat. “So we offered
something else: division and rancor.”
Many who were sick of Trump chaos and
ineptitude are now sick of Biden chaos and ineptitude. Scranton Joe was
supposed to be the sensible, steady one.
After all, as Democrats are keenly
aware, Trump lost the 2020 race as much as Biden won it. Only 44,000 votes in
Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia saved Biden from an Electoral College tie.
And for a long time now, people have
been watching the spectacle of Democrats grinding away at the sausage and
fighting for their piece of the pie (to make a metaphoric meal). And it has not
been a pretty picture.
The question raised by Tuesday’s
debacle for Democrats is: Now that President Biden’s high poll ratings and good
will are squandered, how do they turn the mishegoss into a winning message?
There’s some truth in
what James Carville told Judy
Woodruff: “What went wrong is this stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia
and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even
look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham
Lincoln’s name off of schools.”
There’s also some truth in what
Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Virginia Democrat in a tough
re-election battle, told The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Alexander
Burns about the president: “Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him
to be normal and stop the chaos.”
Biden has pursued his two bills with
Captain Ahab-like zeal; he pines to be F.D.R. and eclipse Barack Obama, who
pushed him aside for Hillary.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hail the
bills as transformational. But what are you transforming into? The election
cratering showed that such overweening efforts are putting off many voters who
are still struggling just to get by, as they move beyond the degradation
wrought by Trump and Covid.
While the Democrats wallow in a family
food fight, Americans are still stressed and exhausted from the whole Covid
ordeal, confronting high gas prices and stymied from getting the appliances and
Christmas toys they want.
“I used to advise mayors, you can be as
visionary as you want, but just make sure you take the garbage out and fill the
potholes,’’ said David Axelrod, who oversaw messaging for Barack Obama.
Republicans have not lost their talent
for coming up with boogeymen to scare white voters, and thanks to a dumb
comment by Terry McAuliffe in a debate, they have succeeded in turning parents’
rights in schools into a wedge issue.
Some in the G.O.P.
see Glenn Youngkin as a template for moving beyond Trump. The members of my
family who voted for Trump are eager to see their party move back to a more
palatable and recognizable form of conservatism.
We’ll see. So far, tiptoeing around
Jabba the Trump has had limited utility. Despite everything, he still has great
sway in the Republican Party.
And if the Supreme Court were to outlaw
abortion and approve open carry on guns, that could scramble the equation all
over again, sending moderate suburbanites back into the arms of Democrats.
Most important, Democrats have to come
up with a vocabulary and a vision to elucidate how the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Framework and Build Back Better will benefit people. B.I.F.
sounds like Willy Loman’s son, and must we ask, to B.B.B. or not to B.B.B.?
Yammering about the budget reconciliation process is not going to cut it.
Tonally and emotionally, Democratic pols seem at odds with the electorate.
At the end of the day, Democrats are
going to get some good stuff for Americans, but voters may not realize that
because of the big hash the Democrats made with the bills.
Asked on Friday if the Democrats could
not get out of their own way, Speaker Pelosi smiled dryly and replied, “Welcome
to my world. This is the Democratic Party.” She sanguinely referred to the
damaging internecine warring as “exuberance.”
Right now, the bills seem like a
Washington abstraction, and it feels as though President Biden has been lost in
a maze forever, grappling with the Minotaurs of Manchin, Sinema and progressives.
It’s analogous to
Afghanistan. Biden did the right thing pulling us out of the quicksand, but
people are mostly going to remember the catastrophic visuals of the botched
exit.
There is a feeling, many Democrats say,
that things are a little out of control — the Afghanistan departure, supply
chains, crime, violence, Biden not being able to pass what he wants to pass or
even pressing for the votes when he went to the Hill before he left for Europe.
The administration lost control of the
virus story; it didn’t seem to have it together on mask or no mask, school or
no school, vaccine mandates or no.
Friday’s strong jobs
report and a rollout for the children’s vaccine gives Democrats a breather, but
many are still wondering if Biden is up to the job. He will need to become a
much better salesman than Biff Loman’s dad.
